DIY Superhero Pop Art Party: Fun and Frugal Ideas

My eldest recently turned 4. To celebrate the occasion we had a Superhero Pop Art Party. We only invited 6 other children as our house and garden is rather small and you can never tell what the English weather will do. As it turned out we had a beautiful day, but if it had been rainy and miserable we would all have had to stay inside. Eight grown-ups and eight kids in a 3 x 8 m space? No way!

I am so chuffed with how it turned out. I spent a little bit more than I should have, but not nearly as much as I could have.

Superhero Pop Art Party

Decorations

I saw a great Vintage Pop Art Party over on Hostess with the mostess. I don’t often covet, but her polkadotty backdrop and little buildings are awesome and I WANTED!!!

But we are simple folk of humble means. I don’t have the money to buy photographic backdrops for my parties and we didn’t have any cardboard boxes to transform into buildings.

I made do with spray-painted cardboard buildings stuck onto a blue plastic table cloth (the same one we used for Jaco’s Elmo Party). The windows were just squares of scrap paper.

I liked the idea of having jars full of monotone sweets. It’s a nice idea, isn’t it? And you see it everywhere. But the logistics of getting a whole bunch of blue or green sweets!!!

I ended up buying 10 bags of Skittles and Smarties and sorting all the colours into ziplock bags. Even so I just about had enough of each colour to fill a glass. And we have enough sweets left over to last us till next Christmas. Anyone need a whole bunch of pink and red sweets? Knock on my door.

For the cupcakes I made simple sponge cupcakes with butter cream icing. The toppers are my own design and the free printable can be found at the bottom of the post. I cut the wrappers out of a Marvel Comic Collage.

There are many cupcake wrapper “masks” or templates available online and it is very easy to trace these onto your desired image/page and then cut out. I am a bit wary of going to copyright jail though, so I have not supplied the templates I used…

Marshmallow Superheroes

I got the birthday boy to help me, so they were edible, cute, and toddler-entertaining.

Snacks

Juice

It still wasn’t superhero-y enough. So I spiced up the juice bottles with some pop art labels. These printables are also available at the bottom of the post and will fit any bottle smaller than 22 cm around.

Cookies

And still I wasn’t satisfied. So I grabbed a box of Ikea Pepparkakor Ginger thins (see this post if you are the kind of person who now HAS to know what Pepparkakor is) and some royal icing (see my post on making black royal icing if you don’t know how) and made these BAM POW SPLAT cookies. Easy peasy. Just write the words in colour and then ice around them in white. Leave to dry for a couple of hours.

Sandwiches and cheese

Using cookie cutters, we cut P’s and 4’s out of sheets of cheese. Add a hand full of Babybel‘s, and you have another cheap and cheerful way of emphasizing the theme.

Fruit and yogurt

Blueberries and Strawberries for a Superhero vitamin boost.

I probably should have washed the blueberries first, hm? The squeezy yogurts are Munch Bunch Strawberry and something-or-other. I think it’s supposed to be lemon…

And notice the Hoola Hoops in the back? They were supposed to be packaged in 3″ ziplock bags with a little label attached, but my 3″ ziplocks have gone walkabouts and I only realized it on the morning of the party.

Cake

I have made a rainbow cake once before, but it was the other kind. The kind where you plop all the different colours into the same cake tin in an orderly fashion and then get a rainbow/vortex effect.

The lightning bolts are made out of melted red candy melts. I simply printed out a template of a lightning bolt using Microsoft Word’s Insert Shapes feature and placed it under some wax paper. I then piped the melted candy melts onto the wax paper, following the outline of the template. When each lightning bolt was done, I placed it in the microwave for 20 seconds to make sure any bumps and lines melted back down. In with the lollipop stick and 30 minutes to harden.

Invites

Of course you can buy a variety of customized/customizable invites. But I was so focused on saving money that I completely forgot about the cost of printer ink and the amount of ink needed for a black invite!

Have a look on the internet. There are so many cute and inspiring invitation ideas. And they are not difficult to design.

Masked Superhero Capes

This is my little Xander modelling the 6-12 month size cape. Don’t look to closely at the image manipulation. It was my first go at erasing something out of a picture and was done while burping a wriggling baby.

I made one of these capes for each of the little guests at the party. It can be worn with or without the mask and is made from jersey cotton with little jersey cotton appliques on the back. I used some fabric left over from when I went through my baby-sling-making phase, so they cost me nothing but a few poppers and some thread.

Cupcake Toppers

Juice Labels

Click on the link below to download the free printable. Cut out the labels and attach to the bottles by sticking a piece of double sided sticky tape where indicated. If the labels are too wide for your bottle, cut off a bit or just stick the double sided sticky tape to the back left edge of the label and wrap it around until it’s nice and snug.

Munchies Labels

As I have already mentioned, these munchies labels were designed for 3″ ziplock bags. I have taken a photo of the label attached to a 4″ bag (for illustration purposes only). Ideally the label should overhang the bag and not the other way around.

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12 Responses to DIY Superhero Pop Art Party: Fun and Frugal Ideas

Hi Dedri …aka Superwoman??? I really enjoyed reading all about your creations for your son’s birthday party! Loved the rainbow cake as well…keep meaning to make one but my plans haven’t materialised into a real cake yet…am in the middle of making a superhero birthday cake for my….37 year old son-in-law?? so I’d best get back to modelling the the ‘Hulk fist’ for the top tier. Thanks for the fun diversion! Annie

Hehe…far from it. I told someone this week that I would usually adhere to the 5-second rule (you know, if something falls on the floor, you can pick it up and eat it if it hasn’t been there for 5 seconds), but at the moment I wouldn’t eat something that falls on my floor. All this busy-ness comes at a price and I’m afraid my washing and my cleaning have been a wee bit neglected of late.

I’m glad you enjoyed the post and I would love to see your “Hulk Fist” cake. My middle son’s first words were: “Hulk smash!”

My son turns 1 next week and I had a huge Bee themed party ready to go, 50 guests, the works. Last week we found out my mum has Stage 3 Breast Cancer and so I cancelled the big party (as she is on chemo and not up to doing much)but I decided today that we still need a theme for small party for the 15 family (including mum).

Seeing she is “fighting cancer” I thought a Super-hero theme would be perfect & your awesome detail and amazing printables have just helped me like you wouldn’t believe. So thank you so much x

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